Yes, you can get goopy green biologic stuff in the fuel cell eating the Jet fuel. The worry isn't loss of fuel, it's contamination of the fuel system causing blockage/flameout. It's one of the reasons we sump/filter fuel before every flight.

Yeah, even as I was writing that, my little voice was telling me something was wrong :-)

The estimator I used (which takes geographic location into account) mentions 4.28 kWh/m2/day which is where I got my original number. I see that it also mentions 158 sq-ft as the roof area needed. I think that's the entire roof of my house 3 layers deep ;-)

I agree that the lease makes it harder to compare to other cars. Honda only offers lease of the FIT EV at this time, but I also liked it because it was a risk reducer for me - worries about battery life etc. I have used the air conditioning and it makes a surprisingly small impact on milage - I saw a loss of less than 1 mile /kWh. The heater on the other hand really uses a LOT of battery. I'm going to be interested to see what happens when it gets really cold here in the winter.

The 90 minute charging time is to re-charge after my 10 kWh commute. If I was to run the battery flat, it's more like 3 hours. I've only done that twice in 6 months of driving... I think the 20 minute charging time is with a special DC charger. I think they charge at 400+ volts (Honda doesn't have this, but I think the new Nissan Leaf does). Mine uses a modified dryer outlet for 220 volt charging. Charging at 110 volts is not practical. It takes all night to charge at 110 volts. It's definitely an emergency thing (Honda supplies a 110 volt charging cable that is carried in the cargo area, but if you had to use it I think you would plug in and come back for the car the next day!)

I have no doubt that purchase price for an electric is higher than that of a gas car, although one could probably make a case that the Tesla is comparably priced to similar luxury vehicles. Certainly if I could buy a Honda FIT EV it would cost substantially more than the gas version. TCO I'm not so sure about. There is the savings in fuel which isn't huge but adds up over the years. The maintenance is probably unknown, but looking at the systems of the FIT, there's a LOT less to maintain than in an ICE car. I think chances are good that maintenance will be substantially less (certainly you'll save on brakes - probably never replace them for the life of the car!).

Tax break - Honda took the $7,500 tax break, not me (because it's a lease) :-(

Where do you live and how long is your commute? You sound like you don't think you could rely on an EV car...

I think Honda is being very conservative because of the bad press it would generate if people were ending up at the side of the road with no charge left. Interestingly, if you *do* run out of charge they'll send a flatbed truck to come get you. My guess is that if you do that more than once or twice they cancel the lease!

As for efficiency, I think one of us made a math error. I got:
Diesel #2/ US gallon: 146,300 kJ converted to Imperial Gallons = 175,560 kJ/gal imp.
If you get 60 mpg, 175,560kJ / 60 = 2,926 kJ/mile == 4,681 kJ/km == 1.3 kWh/km
(http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/pdf/c6-87.pdf pdf alert)
Simpler way to look at it:

Diesel US gallon = 138700 BTU * 1.2 (imp gal) = 166440 BTU = 48 kWh. 60miles / 48kWh = 1.25 miles / kWh
So, based on that even the Tesla @ 3.5 is twice as efficient as the diesel and the FIT is up to 5 times as efficient.

Did I miss something?

6.5 is an optimal milage, 4.5 is a pretty typical number with passengers and/or cargo. Air conditioning doesn't seem to cost that much in milage, heating does - I expect my winter numbers to be lower. Interestingly, I get better milage when I hit traffic jams! (lower speeds, thus lower air drag).

Actually, in another post I did a calculation on PV - it looks like here in Boston (not the solar capital of the world) it would take about 4 square meters of PV to generate enough electricity for my daily commute).

Yes, thank god for the clean/safe petrochemical industry. Their 100% safety record and 0 spill record makes me proud every time I fill up at the gas station. That crap about the Exxon Valdez and the Gulf of Mexico spill was just a bunch of crap made up by hippies who hate America.

Respectfully, although you say you are all for electric cars, you then go on to imply that there is a long way to go before they can be practical. I'd say there is a short way for them to be practical for a large (but not 100%) of the populace.

I'll relate my experience of the last 6 months of leasing a Honda FIT EV:

I drive about a 50 mile round trip commute daily. The Honda gets between 4 and 6.5 miles/kWh on that commute - it'll be worse in the winter, but most days I get home having used about 10 kWh for the commute (thats under 1/2 a charge - I forgot to recharge one night and was able to do the commute the next day and still make it home with 10-15 miles of range left). It takes about 90 minutes after I plug in to recharge to 100% charged. Future charger technology will no doubt shorten that, but I've never had to take the gas car because the electric car hasn't finished charging. I think I pay about 0.18 / kWh for electricity here in Massachusetts, so it costs me about $2.00 for the commute versus about $5 for my Subaru (which is a much less efficient car, so I don't want to imply that's apples for apples).

If I have the math right, here in Massachusetts I could install about 4^2 meters of PV array and generate enough electricity to cover the commute. I based this on a solar system estimator at http://www.find-solar.org/index.php
While you can make cases that it costs CO2 to produce the PV cells etc., as other people have mentioned you also pay CO2 costs to deliver gas to the station, but it's not unreasonable that a large percentage of drivers that own electric cars could produce enough electricity to power their vehicles for their daily drives.

As for costs, I lease the car from Honda for $275/month. I'm saving about $100/month on fuel although again that's comparing an efficient Honda to a STi Subaru play car (22 mpg) so it's not a perfect comparison. Still, in my case, my net cost is about $175/month or just over $2,000 per year to lease the car. So, not at all an extravagant car like the Tesla. I would say affordable by many people if not all (hard to beat a $12,000 gas Honda).

As for usage, I expected that I would drive the Honda on the daily commute but that a lot of weekend running around would require me to use the Subaru. The reality has surprised me: The Subaru has been used more like once per month. It turns out that most of the drives that I thought would require the gas car can be done if I plan on recharging at a public recharge station, which usually isn't that difficult.

The two comments I would say about range (anxiety) is that you have to plan your driving. (I'm a pilot, so it's a lot like planning my flight - you need to leave the house having a fairly good idea of where you'll be going that day, and if it's a longer than 100 mile day which charger you'll use to recharge). This isn't as bad as it sounds, because for a lot of us, our days don't change that radically. I can do the commute to work and still have about 70 extra miles available for appointments and errand running without having to recharge. If your daily commute is more like 100 miles, this probably won't work for you unless there is a recharging station at work. If not, a gas car is probably still for you.

The second comment is that fast driving really really kills range. At 55 I get about 4.4 miles per kWh which gives me about 100 miles of range. At speeds above 65 this starts to drop off quickly. At 85 mph I couldn't make it to work and back. The funny thing is that I tend to take back roads (and thus get around 6.5 miles per kWh giving me around 120 miles of range, and yet this only costs me an extra 10 minutes of commute because although sections of the highway are pretty fast, other sections are really slow because of traffic. Driving back roads I'm moving more slowly, but at a much more steady pace so it doesn't take that much longer to go at a speed that really conserves power. Also, it's a much more pleasant drive! That said, it probably wouldn't be very good for portions of the country like out west where you need to drive at 75+ speeds because of the distances involved.

I went on much longer than I meant to, but I find this BEV a very viable replacement for a gas car, especially in a two car family where there is still a gas car available for longer trips, but even without that I think it would be viable by renting a car occasionally when longer trips are required.

As for your statement that it would be beautiful to drive a quiet car with electrical motor performance, yeah, it is! I can out-accelerate most of the smaller cars on the road, and on a back road (where wind noise is minimal) I can whisper in the front seat and the other people in the car can hear me!

So, to recap, I'd say that cars like the Nissan Leaf, the Honda FIT EV, the Chevy Spark, are actually viable electric cars today and not play-toys for the rich. I think the battery technology will continue to improve, but it's actually already good enough for a lot of us.

I'd like to note that using the Tesla for milage figures is akin to using a SUV for gasoline milage figures - the Model S is a large heavy car. My Honda FIT EV gets about 25%- 80% better mileage / kWh. (I get between 4.5 and 6.5 miles per kWh versus the 3.5 you quoted for the Tesla [130+reserve on 19kWh battery] - I'd expect numbers to improve in the next few years as EV production by the large auto makers is still in it's infancy).

So, unless I'm making a dumb math error, you're off by almost a factor of three for my electric car (Honda FIT).

I get between 4.4 to 6.5 miles per kilowatt hour, which I think works out to about 140 Wh/km? Did I make a mistake, or is the chart you used measuring much larger cars?

Ok, here's another example: a few weeks ago I upgraded to Mountain Lion. As soon as I did, my HP DVI external monitor stopped working (it would go to sleep after a minute or so). Called Apple Support. Their take: it's the fault of the monitor (even though the guy admits that the fact it started exactly when I upgraded the OS was a pretty big coincidence). I point out that other developers I worked with have also been having problems with external monitors ever since Mountain Lion was installed, and that it's pretty likely that someone broke a driver. Apple: "sorry, nothing we can do".

So I get to go buy a new monitor because of Apple's mistake.

>>They were charged with conspiring to provide material support for use in preparation for a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, they each face the possibility of up to 15 years in prison.

So, uh, what *exactly* is the definition of "WOMD"? 'cause if they're being charged with this I'm sure I must not understand what it is...

Wikipedia says:

>>A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures (e.g. buildings), natural structures (e.g. mountains), or the biosphere in general. The scope and application of the term has evolved and been disputed, often signifying more politically than technically. Coined in reference to aerial bombing with chemical explosives, it has come to distinguish large-scale weaponry of other technologies, such as chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear. This differentiates the term from more technical ones such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons (CBRN).

which doesn't sound like what they were intending to build...

Paul

I'm not an Airbus pilot, but my recollection is that there is an algorithm which compares how much stick deflection there is, and gives priority to the one moving more, and then if that's not clear gives priority to the captain's stick...

Um, because during approach much smaller navigation errors could endanger the plane than during cruise?

Paul

Which is why this has been anticipated in the design of critical avionics - redundant microprocessors self checking each other on a regular basis in case one of them experiences such a fault. I think the Boeing 777 autopilot has 9 microprocessors (3 triple redundant multi-architecture processors).

Unfortunately when the ILS/VOR system was designed in the (1940s?) they didn't think about cell phone interference...

Paul

I'm a commercial helicopter pilot and engineer with avionics experience. I've heard of interference second hand over the years: we had one local pilot who couldn't talk to Lawrence Tower because the tower frequency at that time was a harmonic of the microprocessor in the GPS system he had on board. A pilot I fly with occasionally told me he had made a nice mount for his iPhone and it totally interfered with the tachometers in the helicopter he was flying. I was talking recently with a 757 crew and they were complaining about a passenger using a cell phone - they knew because it was bleeding over into their comm system.

If you saw how close to things an airplane gets flying an instrument approach you'd be worried about interference with the navigation radios. There is very very little room for error. I worry less about GPS because I think interference is likely to just knock the aircraft GPS receiver totally out and is very unlikely to give wrong navigational solutions. However, ILS/VOR systems worry me because they are just AM analog signals and it seems much more likely that interference could cause a wrong indication causing a pilot to (fatally) hit an obstacle on approach.

As for people getting upset when people don't listen to the crew members, I side with them. Ever had someone start pulling overhead luggage out of the bins while the aircraft is still taxiing? I have. Imagine some schmuck pulling a heavy bag out just as the plane jostles him and some unlikely fellow passenger gets injured. Would you really just sit there and let him do that? I wouldn't; I'd yell at him to sit down. Why should his fellow passengers be put at risk because of his impatience?

I think the same thing goes for electronic devices. If you really really need to use that phone, lobby FAA/FCC to allow it, but don't just ignore the crew because you don't personally think the risk is that big. It's not your decision to make! And if you decide to put the rest of us at risk by ignoring crew instructions, you shouldn't be surprised when someone gets upset with you!